Chapter 32
Jack
Jack kept the rifle trained on the culvert opening they’d just come through.
Steph was only inches away from him. Her breathing had evened out. His had, too, mostly. The cold was noticeable, his breath coming out in puffs.
The snow had stopped falling, but it was still cold. Too cold. And his feet were a problem. He knew better than to think about them. Right now, all that mattered was his breathing and the rifle. He’d trained enough to know how to compartmentalize pain and take the shot.
Steph had gotten them here—through the timber, across the open ground, and through the metal tube on her hands and knees. She’d known the culvert was there.
Steph wasn’t reckless. Trained. Competent. Calculated. A warrior. Those words described Steph.
He’d been wrong to attack her the way he had, to let the fear of repeating what happened to Celeste allow him to lash out at Steph.
Steph wasn’t Celeste.
The thought arrived clearly, the way things did when he stopped fighting them. Steph wasn’t someone who acted on impulse without training or preparation or understanding of what she was walking into.
She was the exact opposite of that. She had wilderness training and certifications and led people through hard conditions and was used to making decisions under pressure. He knew that. He’d known it earlier when he was yelling at her like a madman.
Too bad the fear of losing her didn’t care what he knew.
That was the part he couldn’t shake and couldn’t explain without saying things he hadn’t said yet.
The terror of watching her risk herself had come from a place that didn’t respond to evidence or logic, the deep place where he’d put Celeste and left her and built the careful life around.
He’d been certain that life was working.
Standing outside Silver Mane’s Lodge, waiting for Steph’s SUV to come down the road, he’d started to understand it wasn’t.
He’d known then that he was in trouble. The truth was, he’d known it the day he met Steph for the first time, as she sat in the snow and stared up at him, her sunglasses all wonky and the most amazing look on her beautiful face.
The engine sounds came again. Louder now, the vibrations carrying over the road. The machine had reached the embankment on the far side. He heard the engine labor slightly, the operator working it against the terrain.
“They’re trying to come over,” he said.
“I think it’s too steep to get up to the road and cross here. They’d need to drive back toward the meadow where the bank isn’t as steep.” She paused. “Or head the other direction toward Silver Mane’s Lodge. There’s an access road there.”
“Or come over on foot. The noise might be a distraction. We can’t stay here.”
“I have an idea where we can go.”
He looked at Steph; she was already looking at him.
Steph jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “There’s a good amount of rock outcroppings on this side. Or we could go deeper into the timber. We could find cover and wait for the rescue team.”
It was the same calculation they’d been running all night, reduced now to its simplest form. Hide and wait.
If the GPS was doing its job, the rescue team would have their updated position. Every minute the poachers spent navigating around the terrain to reach them was a minute closer to the team’s arrival.
“That’s the best choice,” he said.
“Follow me.”
They moved out of the brush and into the trees beyond, working without discussion, falling into the same rhythm they’d found during the night training run before everything went sideways.
She read the terrain, and he followed her lead.
They used the terrain and the timber the way they’d been using cover all night.
He watched her pick a route through a section of broken rock, placing each step with the unhurried precision of someone who had done this in worse conditions.
Something shifted in his chest that had nothing to do with fear.
Whatever was broken between them, all the stuff he’d said in the wrong order from the wrong place, it hadn’t touched this. Out here, she was completely herself and completely competent, and he could see it clearly enough to be honest about it, even through everything else he was feeling.
He owed her more than an apology.
What Jack didn’t know yet was whether the thing underneath the apology was something she’d want once he said it.
Once he told her about Celeste and explained where the words had come from and why the sight of her standing in the snow alive and fine had produced the worst possible response in him instead of the right one.
She glanced back at him once, checking his position, checking his footing on the rock. Not because she doubted him. Because that was how she moved through terrain with another person. She checked. He nodded. She turned back and kept moving.
They found a section of rock outcropping with enough overhang to provide cover on two sides and a clear sightline back through the trees toward the road. Steph settled into it without ceremony. Jack took the position beside her that gave him the angle on the approach. He kept the rifle ready.
The machine sound had changed again. He tracked it without looking away from the tree line, reading the movement by pitch and direction. The operator had backed off the embankment and was moving, working toward the terrain Steph had described, looking for a way across.
“Is the second snowmobile running now?” Steph asked, her head tilted to one side.
Jack paused as he listened. “I think it is. At least we know they aren’t coming at us on foot.”
“Unless the third guy is back in it.”
He shook his head. “I can’t imagine he is. He’d be hurting too much to do anything but stay put.”
Steph shuddered before setting her jaw.
He opened his mouth.
The noise from the second machine increased instantly. Not the circling pattern, not the searching sweep. Loud and direct, closing fast, the sound of an operator who had found his line and was committed to it.
Then the engine dropped to an idle.
“We need to find a better place,” Steph said, looking around. “This is too close to the road. We need to go deeper. There’s another set of rocks on the other side of the timber.”
Jack touched Steph’s arm as he met her gaze. Her expression made it clear the anger hadn’t faded—but survival came first.
“Lead the way.”